CFP: Romantic Interruptions, Romantic Disruptions

Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań, Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology
Bath Spa University, School of Creative and Cultural Arts
and the
Inter-University Centre for the Study of Romanticism

would like to invite you to participate in the

Second Poznań European Romanticism Conference (June 1-3, 2027)

entitled:

Romantic Interruptions, Romantic Disruptions

The Poznań European Romanticism Conference 2027 invites papers exploring interruption, disruption, delay, incompletion, and long-duration composition in British, Irish, and European Romantic writing and scholarship. The conference asks how political upheaval, censorship, exile, economic pressures, and personal circumstance shaped the creation of literary and intellectual works across Romantic Europe.

In 1821, François-René de Chateaubriand, taking advantage of an official diplomatic mission in Berlin, resumed work on his Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb. This return offered an occasion to reflect on a series of comparable moments in the past, when he had repeatedly begun – and abandoned – the work he had started: ‘It is a long way from Combourg to Berlin, from a young dreamer to an old minister. In the foregoing pages I find these words: ‘In how many places have I begun writing these Memoirs, and in what place shall I complete them?’ Nearly four years have passed between the date on which I wrote down the facts which I have just recounted and that on which I am resuming these Memoirs. A thousand things have happened’. This renowned work, which took forty years to complete, serves as the starting point for our reflections. Chateaubriand’s long engagement with the Memoirs offers a productive lens through which to explore the nature of the creative process within European Romanticism.

Artistic processes across Western and Eastern Europe were shaped by diverse dynamics and varied in many respects. From this perspective, a comparative reading of the literary output of Poland, Great Britain, and other European traditions offers a particularly productive way of tracing the distinct trajectories of Romantic cultural development. We are interested in how Polish, British, and other European writers, intellectuals, and scholars of the Romantic era
composed their works, and in how socio-political conditions, the circulation of ideas, and transnational literary exchanges shaped the process of writing itself.

Recent research on eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European literature and intellectual history has increasingly emphasised the precarious, often fragile condition of writers. Martin Mulsow has introduced the notion of “precarious knowledge” to capture this instability. Writers and their works were frequently exposed to persecution, political and religious censorship, imprisonment, or even death for expressing views deemed unacceptable; they also faced the confiscation or destruction of their texts, as well as the risk of oblivion or posthumous disgrace. At the same time, they remained engaged in communication with their contemporaries, seeking to avoid tragic fates while contributing to the emergence of new ideas and the gradual formation of public opinion. Mulsow’s diagnosis resonates not only with the eighteenth century but also with the early decades of the nineteenth, particularly in the case of Polish writers living under conditions of statelessness. We therefore aim to examine the significance of these phenomena in shaping Romantic literary and scholarly production.

Potential Topics:

• literary or scholarly works that were interrupted during their creation (literature, essays, literary criticism)
• works that consisted of many parts and were not created immediately
• works whose creation was planned over many years: diaries, memoirs, travelogues
• works that were abandoned during creation
• works that were written but not published after completion for publishing, economic, or political reasons
  
  
  Confirmed Plenary Speakers
  Dr Madeleine Callaghan (University of Sheffield)
  Professor Claire Connolly (University of Cork)
  Professor Michał Kuziak (University of Warsaw)
  Biennial Workshop on Academic Publishing
  Dr Benjamin Colbert, editor, European Romantic Review (University of Wolverhampton)
  

The second biennial Poznań European Romanticism Conference will be held in English on June 1-3, 2027 in Poznań, Poland. Please submit topic proposals (including an abstract of up to 300 words) together with a short biographical note to junkiert@amu.edu.pl by the end of October 2026.

Notification of acceptance will be sent by the end of November 2026. A modest conference fee is planned; its exact amount will be determined once the list of participants has been finalised.

Hosts:
Prof Maciej Junkiert (Poznań)
Prof Diego Saglia (Parma)
Prof John Strachan (Bath)